Management of berths at sea for seafarer students

Seafarer training in Australia is severely affected by the scarcity of training berths, which is due to the absence of sufficient berths on ‘blue water’ vessels in a declining Australian fleet. Analysis of responses from global maritime institutes provide evidence to suggest an inconsistency in approach and a global frustration with international regimes that enforce archaic training practices and time serving, which retard efforts to solve the issue of availability of sea time and applied training. Improved collaboration between key stakeholders, harnessing alternate means of training, recognition of prior learning, and innovative management of vessels providing sea time could be combined to reduce the current backlog of seafarers unable to obtain approved certificates of competence due to a lack of mandatory sea time. Issues associated with these alternative approaches will be discussed and the solutions that should be investigated and trialled in Australia identified.